PRUSSIA AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC

PRUSSIA AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLICAuthor(s): HAJO HOLBORNSource: Social Research, Vol. 23, No. 3 (AUTUMN 1956), pp. 331-342Published by: The New SchoolStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40969541 .

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PRUSSIA AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC

BY HAJO HOLBORN

1 he Weimar Republic is not held in very high esteem in Ger- many or abroad. The sentiments it awakens range from friendly pity to spiteful contempt, but they hardly ever reflect an attitude of sympathetic appreciation. As a period of history the years between 1919 and 1933 are under the shadow of the collapse that followed the First World War and the catastrophe of the Hitler regime. Since the course of world history seems to have irrefutably proved the weakness of the democratic institutions created in Germany in 1919, there seems to be no particular reason to pay much attention now to this transitional period, except perhaps to show how by sins of omission or commission it paved the way for Hitler. Actually, however, in spite of its disastrous defeat, the Weimar Republic cannot be written off as an empty or futile chapter of German history.

The first German republic was not - as its opponents asserted - a foreign importation made possible by Germany's military defeat, but had roots in older German history at least back to 1848. Therefore present-day German democracy is linked up with the Weimar Republic more closely than is usually admitted. I do not overlook the differences between the Bonn and Weimar

Republics, nor would I hesitate to say that the indigenous strength of German democracy appears to me greater today than

thirty years ago. But if this is correct it is at least partly explained by certain achievements of the Weimar Republic which Bonn inherited. It is unnecessary to mention that many political leaders of the Bonn Republic, beginning with Theodor Heuss and Konrad Adenauer, formed their political ideals in the years between 1919 and 1932, and that the Bonn and Weimar consti- tutions are more than superficially related.



332 SOCIAL RESEARCH

Some people will see in such reassertion of traditions only a reflection of the relatively strong similarity of the external conditions and the underlying social patterns of German life. The statesmen of the Weimar period were not, however, mere repre- sentatives of a tradition; by their active courage and practical deeds they contributed to the world of German political experience.

If in the following pages I select as an outstanding instance of this leadership the head of the Prussian government during most of the Weimar period, the late Otto Braun, I am not just indulging in memories of bygone days, but am endeavoring to find a symbol of a period that is not only an integral part of

past German history but also relevant to many of our present- day problems. It may be said that Braun, next to Ebert and Stresemann, had the greatest personal influence in fashioning the democratic life of the Weimar era. The tasks with which he dealt were in a way of a more limited political scope than those Ebert and Stresemann wrestled with. On the other hand, his

political leadership extended over the whole period from 1918 to 1932.

1

Otto Braun demonstrated that the absolutistic and militaristic Prussia could be transformed into an agent of democratic policy without a revolution if the anti-authoritarian forces could be per- suaded by word and action to compromise their political aims. He proved that it was not Prussia as such, or the majority of the Prussian people, that was, so to speak, congenitally militaristic and authoritarian, but that the peculiar monarchical system had produced the aggressive character of the old Prussia.

Into the modern age Prussia had maintained much of the structure that Frederick William I and Frederick the Great had erected. It went through great changes in the period of reform between 1807 and 1819, and again in the period between 1848 and 1878. But its predominantly absolutistic form of government



PRUSSIA AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC 333 remained essentially unaffected by the introduction of extensive civil rights and the semblance of representative institutions. Even after the founding of the Second Empire, Prussia must be described as a lightly-veiled class-state built chiefly on the Junker class and the high bourgeoisie and ruled by a monarchical and bureaucratic regime whose supremacy was guaranteed by the army. It was this Prussian system which was extended over Ger- many, with little modification, in Bismarck's Empire. The Bis- marckian constitution of 1867-71 was a device to find a balance between the conservative Prussian monarchy and the more liberal states of southern Germany, but the fulcrum of the balance rested in Prussia. With the Prussian king as German emperor, with complete Prussian control over military and foreign affairs, the federal system in Germany was rigidly limited by Prussian predominance, or, as the German constitutional lawyers called it, the Prussian hegemony.

Against this pseudo-constitutional Prussian-German system the working-class movement rose in bitter opposition. The system was viewed with suspicion also by large groups of the Catholic population. The conflict between the authoritarian government and the lower classes was not solved in the forty years of the Second Empire, or in the four years of World War I, when all groups in Germany proved that the ruling classes had no monop- oly on patriotism or on political wisdom. The failure of the monarchical government to reform German constitutional life and make the oppositional elements full citizens of the nation neces- sarily turned the military defeat of 1918 into a political revolution as well.

Ever since German liberals began to think of a German uni- fication that would exclude Austria, that is, since the 1830s, Prussia had posed a problem apart from its reactionary political character. Prussia was simply too big to be fitted into a federal system. The idea of the dissolution of Prussia into its various provinces was first seriously debated during the revolution of 1848-49. The revolution of 1918 seemed finally to open the way



334 SOCIAL RESEARCH

for the division of Prussia. The democrat Hugo Preuss, who had been made secretary of interior after the revolution in order to prepare a draft constitution to be presented to the Constituent Assembly, advocated the abolition of a central Prussian government and the formation of a number of North-German states, composed of the Prussian provinces and the small states. But while Preuss succeeded in his attempts to strengthen the federal German government and subordinate the Lander governments to it, he was defeated in his projected reform of the regional units of Germany.

In the first days of the revolution the possibility had existed to prohibit the formation of a Prussian government, and the ques- tion was actually discussed whether the council of people's commissars, which assumed the functions of a German government, should assume those of the Prussian government as well. But Ebert felt that the council would be overburdened with problems of first political magnitude without adding the Prussian load. He was also fully aware of the strong particularist sentiment in southern Germany at that moment. The radical socialist government under Kurt Eisner, which had come to power in Bavaria

through the November revolution, exploited to the full the resent- ment against Prussian hegemony and national centralism. The council of people's commissars, which had no real democratic mandate, could hope to assert its authority more easily if it avoided wearing a Prussian hat in addition to its German hat.

It can also be read in the so-far unpublished minutes of the council that Ebert foresaw the strong opposition that the Preuss

plan for the regional reorganization of Germany would arouse. The project was practically buried by the Weimar National

Assembly. It seemed unwise to tamper with the traditional admin- istrative structure of Germany at a moment when the Rhinelands were occupied, the German-Polish frontiers were being fought over, and plebiscites were about to be held in Upper Silesia, East Prussia, and North Schleswig.

In Prussia itself, which had a government of its own after



PRUSSIA AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC 335 November 12, 1918, and after January 1919 a democratically elected assembly, no strong signs could be found that the provinces wished to become states. A move in this direction in the early days of the revolution by the mayor of Cologne, Dr. Aden- auer, found only a weak echo. In Hanover the particularist movement was somewhat more persistent, but represented at all times only a small minority. In all other provinces not even this much of a popular expression occurred.

The upshot of all these constitutional debates was a peculiar compromise, which was thoroughly illogical and not too practical but proved in the end rather fortunate. The Prussian state was preserved, though the Weimar constitution made provision for the possible secession of individual provinces through democratic initiative and plebiscite. But the Weimar constitution took away from all the states so much legislative and executive power that the new centralization under the federal government would in itself have made the predominance of a Prussian government impossible. Military and foreign affairs in particular were defi- nitely transferred to federal authority, which became also the complete master of German economic and financial policies. Moreover, the organ of the states within the federal government, the federal council, which had been the chief organ of federal legislation and the main channel of Prussian influence in the Bismarckian Empire, was confined to largely advisory functions. Yet to the makers of the constitution this still was not enough to lay the ghost of Prussian hegemony. Therefore within the new federal council the Prussian free state received only two- fifths of the votes, and half of these were assigned to the individual Prussian provinces.

Thus the Prussian eagle not only had its wings drastically clipped but also lost many of its feathers. Still, Prussia emerged as a powerful force in the Weimar Republic. The administra- tion of two-thirds of Germany was bound to remain of the greatest political significance, irrespective of the exact nature of the constitutional provisions for Prussian participation in the



336 SOCIAL RESEARCH

formulation of German policies. Actually the federal council became a much more important organ of the German government than the Weimar constitution had envisaged. The admin- istration of police, justice, and education, as well as of the very large state properties in domains, forests, mines, and public works, created a strong power position, provided the Prussian government was capable of developing a unified political will.

If something like a Prussian, as distinct from German, patriotism had existed among the majority of the people, the Prussian

government might have insisted after 1920 on the restoration of some Prussian rights. But the government of Otto Braun eschewed such policies altogether. On the contrary, it conceived of its function as one resisting any type of state-rights pressure. In the attempts undertaken in the later twenties to cure the

organizational weaknesses of the Republic - known as the Reichs- reform movement - the Prussian government went so far as to offer its own demise.

The Prussian government under Braun used its strength and its influence on federal affairs to make the new Republic more secure and to realize the concrete democratic ideals of the Weimar constitution. By making the fundamental law of the Empire the basis of its own policy, Prussia acquired once more an important historic mission. Baden, Hesse, and Hamburg followed a similar course, but Prussia's role in the defense and implementa- tion of German democracy was greater, not only on account of its size but also because it neutralized the strongest reactionary elements within Germany.

What happened in Prussia after 1919 would not have been

possible without the Catholic Center party. Traditionally the chief supporter of state rights, the Center party accepted the large expansion of the authority of the federal government through the Weimar constitution. Traditionally critical of a Prussian

government, the party, after 1919, devoted itself earnestly to the

problems of the central Prussian government. The Bismarckian

Empire had tended to confine the political movement of German



PRUSSIA AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC 337 Catholicism to its provincial strongholds, and the Center party had shown much inclination to shut itself up in its towers. The active and outgoing participation of the Center party in national affairs which the Weimar Republic brought about was one of the fortunate pages of recent German history. The coalition in which the Center party participated made it possible to make up for the weakness of the liberal forces in the German bourgeoisie, which were particularly feeble in East Germany.

But there is no doubt that the formation of a Prussian government in 1919, through a coalition of the Social Democratic and Center parties, augmented by whatever liberal elements were willing to cooperate, was instigated by the Social Democratic party, and that government would not have lasted from 1920 to 1932 had it not been for the statesmanship of Otto Braun. Prussia was not Germany, and therefore the Prussian government had only a limited influence on many fundamental political decisions taken by German governments in which the Social Demo- crats were not represented. The latter did not even dominate the Prussian government, because they had to make concessions of a rather stringent nature to their coalition partners. But Braun was able to prove that active participation in government could yield practical results for the benefit of the working class. His government was not merely tolerated by the majority of the German workers, but gained their faithful support. Not the revolution of 1918-19 but the twelve-year regime in Prussia under Braun remolded the Social Democratic movement into the party that it is essentially today.

n

The Social Democratic movement in Germany had come into being during the industrial revolution in the 1860s, gaining strength in the 1870s, as the protest of the workers against aristo- cratic privileges and the social callousness of the new industrial class. The attempted suppression of the socialist movement in the 1880s hardened the bitter conflict without stopping the rapid



338 SOCIAL RESEARCH

growth of the movement. By 1903 the Social Democratic movement comprised one-third of all German voters.

Historically speaking, European socialism was the answer to social systems that had grown out of a feudal past. The new bourgeoisie built up its status as a wielder of control, and closed itself off against the lower classes, exactly as the nobility had done in the past against the commoners. Property became the key to political power, social privilege, education, and personal dignity. This explains why the demand for the nationalization of the means of production had such a powerful appeal to the early believers in socialism. But the rising revolutionary radi- calism, expressed in the rather rigid, and largely Marxist, Erfurt

program of the Social Democratic party, had as its most immedi- ate aim the isolation of the movement from the bourgeoisie. As such a movement it formed the character of the Social Democratic leaders and followers in many important respects.

What Marxism, pure or diluted, taught the stepchildren of the nation was the confidence that they marched in the vanguard of history. This was a message that gave meaning to their daily struggles. The Social Democratic program infused in leaders and followers the faith that, in spite of temporary delays aiid set- backs, victory would be theirs. Obviously victory would be the

victory of the working class as a whole, and its unity was a

prerequisite of ultimate success. In cultivating this unity the individual could already enjoy some of the humane pleasures of the final stage of history, with the accidental outward differences of men submerged in full equality, and personal relations turned into fraternal comradeship. The preparation for a new civiliza- tion could begin through common self-education.

The philosophy of history, the social and individual ethics, that characterized the Social Democratic party before World War I

stamped the thought and habits of the German worker very pro^ foundly, but also the personality of the party's leaders. Otto Braun showed their imprint most clearly. His quiet but firm conviction that democracy and socialism would eventually be



PRUSSIA AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC 339

fully realized, his loyalty to the working people, his belief in education as a means of promoting the freedom of the individual and of the masses - all these were ideals that Braun acquired in the Social Democratic movement. He represented it well in his great personal modesty and the simplicity of his style of life, although he possessed a natural dignity that commanded respect. In his opinion the individual had to seek fulfillment in service to the group. Kant's categorical imperative - "Act in such a way that the maxim of your will could at all times be taken as the valid principle of a general legislation" - found in the unpre- tending Prussian, Otto Braun, a new application.

When Braun first reached a certain prominence in the party - he became a member of its national executive committee in 1911 - the party had gone through considerable changes. His own career was characteristic of some of the novel trends. When hardly out of his teens he was a member of a group of youngsters, the so-called Berliner ]ungen, who agitated against the "counter- revolutionary" Erfurt party program of 1891. At the end of the 1890s he returned to Konigsberg, where he edited the Social Democratic newspaper and campaigned for the party. Although the party on the whole neglected the peasants and the problems of agriculture, Braun scored notable successes in organizing the farm workers of the province. The monarchical regime made life most unpleasant for him. Hugo Haase, one of the chairmen of the German Social Democratic party and after the split of the party the leader of the Independent Socialists, was then a prac- ticing lawyer in Konigsberg. He alone represented Braun in sixty-four court trials in seventeen years. But in spite of all chicaneries of the government, Braun, like many other members of the German Social Democratic party in those years, went through a development toward a strong faith in democracy.

Soon after the oppressive anti-socialist law was lifted, a steady trend from revolutionist to reformist tactics and ideas gathered strength. The growth of the party created a home, or at least a roof, for cultivating the aspirations of German workers. More



34O SOCIAL RESEARCH

important still was the rise of trade unionism and its direct and indirect influence on the policies of the party. The German

working class certainly did not receive its just share in the growing national income, but its lot was improved by the social legislation enacted after the 1880s, and it participated to some extent in the relative prosperity of the two decades before 1914. By 1911 the German workers had much more to lose than their chains. Not a classless society but progress toward an egalitarian society received the greatest emphasis. In many respects these German socialists must be considered true heirs of the German democrats of 1848.

From this it becomes understandable why the Social Democratic

party joined in the German war effort of 1914, and why the

majority of the party adhered to this course to the end of the war. And in the light of the party's history it cannot appear surprising that its unity broke under the effects of the war, and that not even during the revolution was unity restored, although the break in 1917 occurred largely over issues different from those that had to be faced in 1918-20. The split in the party was itself one of the chief reasons for the failure of the German socialists to gain a majority within German democracy or to win an unassailable position for it.

But behind the division lay the divergence between political theory and actual practice. This would never have been quite so sharp if democratic socialism had not come to life in the hostile

atmosphere of an authoritarian state, and many other shortcom-

ings of the Social Democratic party can be attributed to this fact. In the decisive years before World War I the party did not pro- duce leaders of eminence who could have hammered out a political program that would have excluded sheer opportunism and, at the other extreme, Utopian dogmatism. The party leaders -

and this applies to both wings of the Social Democratic

party - were not adequately prepared for a wide range of political realities, particularly the problems of armed power and foreign affairs.



PRUSSIA AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC 341 Otto Braun did not play a leading role in the great decisions

of the German revolution. His place was on the side of the democratic reformists, at least from 1908 on, and characteristi- cally, as Prussian minister of agriculture, he centered all his efforts on the restoration of food production and the mastery of admin- istrative problems of state. The time of his important decisions came after 1920, when the Social Democratic party had already been forced out of the federal government.

If the majority socialists in Prussia had then withdrawn from the Prussian government, the Weimar Republic, and also the Social Democratic party, would have had a drastically different history. It would have meant the restoration of the political fronts along class lines as they had existed prior to 1914. The old ruling forces in the country, together with the army and the bureaucracy, would have considered such a flight of the Social Democrats a complete victory, which they would not have hesi- tated to exploit. On the other hand, if the Social Democrats had gone into total opposition, they would have become increas- ingly dependent on the left-wing socialists and communists. Braun's endeavor to form a Prussian government of the Weimar coalition, and his skill in making it work, blocked such a development. He saved the democratic and reformist character of the Social Democratic movement in Germany.

The policy of the leaders of the majority socialists has often been described as an act of treason perpetrated by a group of bosses on the faithful revolutionary masses. It should not be denied that the majority socialists failed to make use of some of their opportunities for advancing socialist aims. One can even go further and deplore certain gratuitous demonstrations of national patriotism. The fatuous attitude of the majority socialists toward the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was indefensible on Social Democratic principles and at the same time damaging to German national interest.

But they who think that the democratic character of Otto Braun does not reflect the deep longings of the majority of the



342 SOCIAL RESEARCH

German workers do not know those workers. Stalin did not know them when he told Churchill and Roosevelt contemptuous jokes about the unrevolutionary and docile nature of the German working class; the Russian leaders have had occasion since 1945 to learn that the German workers are by no means so docile as Stalin thought. They have preferred order to chaos, but also freedom and equal rights to serfdom. Although the statesmen of Weimar failed to avoid the catastrophe of the Hitler regime, the Social Democratic party was not only easily restored in 1945 but also able to win the adherence of the former communist vote.

There exist, of course, great differences between the Weimar and Bonn Republics, with respect both to their internal political complexion and to the international conditions surrounding them. There is, however, a bridge leading from the Weimar

Republic to present-day Germany, and it is this bridge that I have tried to sketch. If from the beginning the Bonn Republic saw its way cleared of some of the most pernicious conflicts which beset Germany in the past, the Weimar Republic can claim credit for this achievement. In its history the last dutiful and respon- sible Prussian statesman, Otto Braun, and his government per- formed a memorable task.



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PRUSSIA AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC